by Bryan Smith
Miss Huffington’s hand flashed, snapped across the man’s cheek. “You’re pathetic.”
The guard rubbed his cheek. He didn’t say anything.
“I trust, however, that we have come to terms.”
He nodded. “Yeah. Okay.”
“Good. Report to me after you’ve killed and disposed of Cheney.”
Melissa gulped.
Holy shit!
It had sounded like they were discussing a murder-for-hire, but she had thought she must be misunderstanding what was being said. But no, they’d really been talking about killing someone. Not only that, the person they were talking about was the one person in the world she’d love to see dead.
Maybe Miss Huffington wasn’t so bad after all.
Something drew Miss Huffington’s gaze to the frosted glass window on the rear door. The headmistress frowned and moved to the door, bending a little at the waist to peer through the window.
Then her head snapped toward the guard. “We have intruders on the property.”
The guard’s hand went to the gun holstered on his belt. “I’ll get rid of them.”
Miss Huffington straightened. “That won’t be necessary. They’re weaving, barely upright. I’ll shoo the drunks off. You get back to your post and intercept Cheney. Time’s short.”
The guard nodded, then turned and hurried away.
Miss Huffington punched the metal push bar at the door’s center and stepped outside, pausing for a moment to prop the door open with a cinder block. She then disappeared into the darkness beyond the door. They heard her strident tone as she yelled at the intruders to get off the property.
David leaned close to Melissa and whispered in her ear. “What’s going on? Why doesn’t she just call the police to get rid of them?”
Melissa remained poised against the edge of the archway, but turned her head to look at David. “Didn’t you hear them? They’re gonna kill Mr. Cheney. Last thing they’ll want is police around.”
Lindy let out a frightened little whimper. She stepped around Melissa to get her own look at the hallway. “This is too much. I think we should just get back to our rooms while we have a chance. If they find us and figure out we heard them talking about…”
Lindy’s voice trailed off and she whimpered again.
Melissa looked at her. The girl’s eyes glistened with tears. As much as she wanted out of this place, she had to admit Lindy’s suggestion was the only smart option at this point. Miss Huffington was getting rid of Cheney. That would make things more bearable for a while, give her time to plot a more efficient means of escape.
She sighed. “Okay. You’re probably—”
A high, sharp scream cut her off.
Lindy emitted a startled shriek of her own and Melissa’s head snapped back toward the open rear door. She saw darkness and a very faint suggestion of movement. She moved away from the archway, out into the hallway.
David put a hand on her shoulder. “Melissa, no! What are you doing?”
Melissa shrugged his hand away.
Another scream resonated in the night, this one much closer. Then Sybil Huffington came stumbling through the open door, collapsing to the tiled floor in a shuddering, whimpering heap. Melissa let her bag slide off her shoulder and drop to the floor. She took a few tentative steps toward the fallen headmistress. She shouldn’t be doing this, should only be worried about saving her own skin, but she couldn’t help it. The woman was in trouble. She needed help. David and Lindy reluctantly followed her into the hallway.
Sybil Huffington raised her head and blinked at them in confusion. “What are you children doing out of your rooms?”
Melissa’s mouth opened. Her jaw worked, but no sound came out.
“Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Sybil got to her knees and Melissa saw that the woman’s blouse had been shredded across the front. Blood oozed in trickles from the tatters. More blood welled from a wound on her forearm. It almost looked as if she’d been…bitten.
Melissa thought about the drunks she’d seen out back.
Had they done that?
Sybil extended a hand toward them. “Someone help me. There’s crazy people outside. Dangerous people.” She glanced behind her. “We need to get that door closed.”
David sprang into motion then, stepping past the headmistress while Melissa took her hand and helped the woman to her feet. Sybil squeezed her hand tight, almost too tight. She stared into Melissa’s eyes, her own eyes projecting a coldness that made Melissa shiver. “Is it just the three of you down here?”
Melissa’s lower lip trembled. “I…I…”
Melissa was scared shitless. This was a woman who’d just negotiated the price of a man’s murder the way other people might haggle over the price of a car (except for the blowjob). She wasn’t dumb. She would know they’d been hiding out nearby, had probably heard every word of her conversation with the guard.
She wouldn’t be able to let them live.
Melissa tried to twist out of the woman’s grip, but the headmistress was stronger and easily held on. “You’ll not be going anywhere, dear.” Something subtle shifted in her features then. A hint of a leer. Strange. “Your friends will spend the night in isolation rooms, and you will accompany me to my office.”
Melissa felt something wet on her hand. She glanced down and saw that blood from Miss Huffington’s arm wound on her wrist. Blood was still flowing at a pretty good rate from that wound. What the hell? That had to hurt like a motherfucker. Maybe adrenaline was blunting the pain. Whatever the case, she realized something in that moment.
Miss Huffington wasn’t just a woman capable of murder.
She was stone cold crazy.
She tried again to twist free.
Miss Huffington clamped her free hand around Melissa’s neck, squeezing hard.
The scream that came then startled both of them. Miss Huffington released Melissa and spun toward the door. David stumbled backward through the door, tripped, and landed hard on his back. Melissa loosed a scream of her own as the first of the “drunks” came staggering through the door.
Melissa recognized the girl.
Anna Kincaid.
And she recognized something else.
Anna was dead.
Dead, but upright—and intent on nothing but bloody murder.
Her eyes were empty and glassy, her mouth rimmed with blood and flecks of what looked like raw meat. Her mouth opened and a sound like the low warning snarl of a Rottweiler emanated from her throat.
Lindy said, “Ohmigod! She’s a zombie!”
A zombie, Melissa thought, mind going numb. That’s not possible.
David began to scoot backward, but Anna fell upon him, her open, blood-encrusted mouth diving toward his neck before he could twist away. Her teeth punched into his throat, dug deep, and blood spurted in a high, red arc as she wrenched her head away.
Melissa’s legs went weak and she stumbled sideways, falling against the wall.
Lindy fell against her, clutching at her, buried her face in her neck as she mewled like a baby.
More zombies lurched through the still open door. Two were dressed like hookers, their decaying bodies dripping with dirt. The stench of rot filled the air.
A dead man followed them through the door.
Quigley, the maintenance man.
Now it was Sybil Huffington’s turn to scream.
She turned and bolted toward the staircase at the end of the hallway, leaving Melissa and Lindy to fend for themselves.
10: GIMME GIMME SHOCK TREATMENT
Wayne was acutely aware of the need to get the fat man up and mobile again before some well-meaning motorist stopped and offered to lend a helping hand. Or worse yet, a cop. A showdown with the law armed only with an unloaded handgun couldn’t end well.
The Cherokee’s passenger door creaked open and in a moment he heard the crunch of booted feet on gravel. He looked up and saw Steve peering down at the unconscious man. Rai
n flattened his teased-out hair, making his long, lean figure vaguely resemble a wilted scarecrow.
“Is this dude dead?”
Wayne looked at the man’s chest, saw it rise a little, then fall again. “No, thank God. But we’ve got to get him up and inside that fucking Caddy soon.”
“Yeah.” Steve lifted his head and looked first to his left and then to his right, searching the road for approaching cars. “Have you tried slapping him?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
Wayne made an exasperated sound. “Nothing. Like slapping a bowling ball.”
“Well, shit.”
Steve knelt at the opposite side of the man’s body and lifted one of his thick arms, slid a hand under a damp armpit. He indicated the man’s other arm with a nod. “We’re gonna have to drag him.”
Wayne groaned. “Fuck. Dude has to weigh three-hundred pounds.”
“Yeah, so the sooner we get started, the better.”
Wayne resigned himself to the task. Dragging hundreds of pounds of dead weight across a rain-slicked road was a job better suited to Arnold Schwarzenegger or some other weight-lifting son of a bitch. Wayne was no Schwarzenegger. He was a skinny kid from the suburbs. The bulk of his exercise came from manipulating an Atari joystick. But there was nothing for it but to do it. He shoved the empty.45 into the waistband of his wet jeans and got a grip on the man’s other arm.
Steve looked him in the eye. “Ready?”
Wayne nodded. “Yeah.”
“Count of three, then. One, two—
Wayne got his feet planted solidly beneath him and pushed backward with everything he had as Steve reached the end of the count-off. The body slid a good two feet across the road’s shoulder. Getting started was the hard part. The rest of it was just a matter of keeping focused and bearing down. His shoulders were aching by the time they reached the Cad’s open driver’s side door. And he felt as if someone had clubbed him in the small of the back with a heavy wrench. But they’d reached their destination and still the road in both directions remained dark. Yet they couldn’t afford to rest—their luck couldn’t hold out forever.
They hoisted the unconscious man to a sitting position. Steve hurried to the other side of the car, opened the door there and crawled across the front seat. He reached beneath the seat, found a lever, and pushed the seat back. He then slipped his hands beneath the man’s armpits and looked at Wayne. “I’ll pull, you push.”
Wayne grimaced. “Goddamn. You’d think he’d wake up.”
“Oh, he’s gonna wake up, one way or another. Let’s do this.”
Wayne dropped to his knees, got his feet planted behind him, and reached between the man’s legs to get a solid grip on the backs of his prodigious thighs. He signaled readiness and Steve did the count-off again. Steve provided enough of an initial lift so that Wayne was able to really put his shoulder into it. The man’s torso came off the wet gravel and in a few more moments they had him wedged behind the steering wheel. They spent a few more moments getting his legs situated in the well beneath the steering wheel. Then Wayne threw the door shut, opened the rear door, and slid into the back seat.
Steve peered at him over the top of the front seat. “I’ll be right back, dude. Gonna get my gun and close up your ride.”
“Get my keys, too.”
“Right.”
Then he was gone and Wayne was alone in the car with the SIMRC man. He removed the.45 from his waistband and leaned over the front seat to study the man’s puffy face His head lolled to one side, mouth hanging open, a small pink wedge of tongue visible between the lips. He wondered about the man, whether he was a part of the center’s administrative team or instead played some active role in the brainwashing of supposedly wayward children. Not that it mattered. He clearly worked there, and therefore, as far as Wayne was concerned, was guilty by association of whatever horrible thing was happening to Melissa.
The car shook slightly as the front passenger door was yanked open and Steve plopped back inside. Steve passed him his keys and pulled the door shut. He then showed Wayne an expression far more solemn than he was used to seeing from his friend.
“Here’s where we go hardcore, dude.”
He punched in the Cad’s cigarette lighter.
Steve’s eyes widened. “Oh. Um…I don’t know about this, dude.”
“What do you mean?
Wayne blinked. “You’re gonna threaten him with that, right? With torture?”
Steve rolled his eyes. “Torture? Yeah, if you wanna get technical about it. You got any better ideas? You could try slapping him again.”
Wayne tried it.
The man still didn’t stir.
“It’s like he’s in a fuckin’ coma.”
“Maybe he had a stroke or something when you pointed that.45 at him.”
Wayne’s face pinched up. “Shit, don’t say that.”
The cigarette lighter popped out and Steve removed the little cylinder from its circular slot on the dash. The end glowed bright red in the semi-darkness. Wayne’s stomach tightened as he watched his friend apply those red-hot coils to the back of the man’s right hand. Bile rose in his throat at the sound of the flesh sizzling, and the smell of burning meat made his eyes water. A few seconds passed, and he began to think Steve’s guess about a stroke had been on the mark. Then the man jerked awake with a high-pitched gasp and yanked his hand away from the lighter. He made blubbering sounds and held his hand up to gape stupidly at the seared flesh. Though he was in great pain, he seemed disoriented for several more moments. Then awareness returned. The man saw that he was in his own car again, and with him were the two hooligans who’d rammed him from behind.
He groped for the door handle.
Wayne pointed the.45 at the man’s face and prayed the asshole wouldn’t faint again.
“Don’t.”
The single terse syllable was enough to still the man’s hand. His eyes filled with tears and he began to blubber again. “Oh, please…please…oh, don’t kill me. Oh, please…”
Steve waved the still-glowing lighter at him and the man cowered against the door. “Shut up with the whining, you big pussy. We need you to concentrate and listen up.”
The man’s eyes danced in their sockets, flicking back and forth, unable to focus for more than a second solely on the.45 or the lighter. The big roll of flesh beneath his chin jiggled. He was breathing in rapid gasps, and Wayne feared he was on the verge of hyperventilating. But then he seemed to relax some. The man wasn’t an idiot. He drove a nice Caddy and wore a suit. He was an asshole, but an at least moderately successful one. Which meant he would be the kind of man who would eventually stop freaking out and start focusing on what he needed to do to extricate himself from this situation.
Or so Wayne hoped.
If not, they’d have to figure something else out. Maybe go into full-on commando mode. Knock this guy out and stuff him in the trunk. Then ram the Caddy through the gated entrance and use the unloaded guns to bluff their way past the security dudes. He really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Every time he considered that option his stomach started tying itself in knots. He tried to picture it and could only imagine the security guards laughing at him before taking his gun away.
But their captive did manage to compose himself, after taking several deep breaths.
Wayne forced back a sigh of relief. Perception mattered. He didn’t want this guy to see any hint of how non-hardcore they were not so far beneath the surface.
“What do you punks want from me?”
Wayne told him.
The man stared at them for several moments after he’d finished laying it out for him, his expression blank. Then his wormy lips curled in a smarmy smile. “You morons. Do you actually believe this will work?”
Steve smirked. “It better work, motherfucker.”
Now the man’s expression mirrored Steve’s, with perhaps an additional measure of arrogance. “Or what?”
Steve held his gaze f
or a moment, didn’t say anything at first. His expression went blank, his eyes flat and cold. Wayne began to wonder if maybe his friend really did have some kind of genuine badass potential lurking within him. Right now he looked like Clint Eastwood in one of those spaghetti westerns. A cold motherfucker. A dude you knew you’d never wanna fuck with after just one look in the eyes. His expression didn’t change as he returned the lighter to its slot in the dashboard. Nor did it change when he withdrew from a jacket pocket the gun Wayne had given him earlier.
And it didn’t change when he jabbed the barrel of the gun into the man’s big belly, pressing hard, really leaning into it. “You’re gonna do it, man. And you’re gonna deliver the performance of your life. I know this because this here gun’s gonna be on you the whole time. And the second I think you’re fucking us, I’m gonna pull the trigger and blow a big fucking hole through your gut.” The corners of his mouth tilted upward in the smallest, coldest smile Wayne had ever seen. “You dig me, man?”
The man was panting again. Wayne figured he wasn’t far from tipping back into total freakout mode. But he swallowed hard and managed to croak out a single word: “Okay.”
Steve eased up on him, removing the gun from the man’s belly and returning to his side of the seat. His smile broadened some, but his eyes remained cold. “Cool.” He looked at Wayne. “See that? You have to be firm with ‘em, man, get ‘em to chill. That way we don’t wind up having to blast a bunch of motherfuckers like when we robbed that bank in Cleveland.”
Wayne pursed his lips hard. Dammit. Rob a bank in Cleveland?
